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Ventilator Scandal: Records of 'Overpriced Malaysian Respirators' Mysteriously Destroyed at Hungarian Foreign Ministry

• 8 Jun 2023 8:45 AM
• Hungary Around the Clock

“To tell you frankly, I have no idea of this … I am unaware of this, I certainly did not issue such instructions”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on ATV in answer to a question from host Egon Rónai on what happened to the documents of the overpriced Malaysian ventilator procurements, which according to data obtained by Transparency International, had been destroyed.

 Szijjártó promised to look into the matter, and claimed he did not know the reason for the disappearance of the documents. However, he said, he is sorry that the government’s ventilator procurement scheme has been “hurt” so much, because they tried, on the basis of mathematical models, to procure as many ventilators as they thought would be needed.

Transparency reported that some documents related to suspicious ventilator procurement deals were destroyed at the Foreign Ministry in November, 2021, 20 months after the procurements.

These documents reportedly included papers verifying the transparency of GR Technologies, a suspect supplier. These documents will never become known.

This emerged after the Foreign Ministry refused to release information about the contract. Transparency eventually won access to those documents in a lawsuit.

Ultimately the Kúria ruled that the documents must be released, only for the Foreign Ministry to tell the NGO that these documents are no longer available.

MTI Photo: Márton Mónus

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